Fellows

“Being a CPD research fellow has helped me connect with a dynamic and forward-looking group of people, focused on developing innovative and sustainable solutions to the big policy issues facing our community.”

Fiona Armstrong

Fiona Armstrong is a leading public policy reform advocate, with particular interest in climate, health and energy policy. She is a co-author of the 2009 Centre for Policy Development Policy Paper Putting Health in Local Hands: Shifting Governance and Funding to Regional Health Organisations. She has a background in health policy as a health professional and as a journalist. Fiona is a contributing author to CPD’s book More Than Luck: Ideas Australia needs now. Fiona’s chapter Shifting from fear to hope calls for a new national narrative to allow us to feel confident in our solutions to combat climate change. Fiona is the author of a 2013 report on the health benefits of climate action: Our Uncashed Dividend, and the producer of the 2013 film on the implications for health from our energy choices, The Human Cost of Power. She has been published on a wide range of issues including health, environment, energy, politics, finance, Indigenous affairs, mental health, aged care, education, workforce, law, and industrial relations. Fiona has a Masters in Politics and Public Policy and is involved in research, advocacy and communications in the areas of climate, health and energy policy.

Professor James Arvanitakis

Prof James Arvanitakis is a lecturer in the Humanities and the Head of The Academy at the University of Western Sydney. He is also a member of the University’s Institute for Cultural and Society where his research areas include citizenship, resilience, piracy and the future of universities. James is a regular media commentator, and has his own segment on FBI Radio.

James was a former banker and advocate for free trade, but having witnessed child and indentured labour, has worked to develop sustainable, socially just and equitable economic policies, working as a human rights activist throughout the Pacific, Indonesia and Europe.

After being internationally recognised for his innovative teaching style, in 2012, James was awarded the Prime Minister’s University Teacher of the Year Award. In the same year, he received an ARC Discover Grant as chief investigator researching citizenship and young people. His latest book is an edited collection released entitled The Citizen of the Twenty-First Century and was released in November 2013. He blogs at Musings of a (sometimes) Academic Activist.

Mark Bahnisch

Dr Mark Bahnisch has been an invited speaker, panellist and keynote at numerous conferences and colloquia. He has 38 academic publications, including co-authorship of reports for Health Workforce Australia and a chapter in Power and Organizations, in the international SAGE Library of Business and Management series. He was conjoint Chief Investigator on a rural health workforce project for Clinical Education Queensland. As Director of FAQ Research, he led a project on social impacts of mining activity in rural Australia in 2012. His PhD, The Phenomenology of Utopia, was awarded by QUT in 2009 and current research interests include the changing culture of health professions, realistic utopias and the sociology of extractive industries.

Mark is Sessional Lecturer in Management at Curtin University Sydney and lectures in the School of Population Health at The University of Queensland on research methods. In 2012 and 2013 he was Conjoint Research Associate with the Centre for Social Research in Energy and Resources at the University of Newcastle, working on social licence to operate and communications issues in unconventional gas on a project managed by ACOLA for the ‘Securing Australia’s Future’ programme initiated by the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council. He is a Research Affiliate of the Eidos Institute and has contributed substantially to policy debates and public affairs analysis. His applied research has focused on public policy, communications, employment relations and organisational strategy and culture. His consultancy has attracted commendations from EOWA and the QIRC. A current project is on deepening research engagement for the Australian Centre for Entrepreneurship.

Eva Cox AO

Eva Cox AO is a Professorial Fellow at Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology Sydney where, as the former Program Director of Social Inquiry, she taught research and policy advocacy. She runs a small consultancy, Distaff Associates, and is convenor of the Women’s Equity Think Tank. Eva’s current research interests broadly respond to the task of creating new social policy frameworks designed to help bring about a more civil society. An impassioned feminist, she delivered the 1995 ABC Boyer Lectures on A Truly Civil Society, a goal she is tirelessly working towards. She advocates using both Indigenous and feminist lenses to explore how we can define what makes a good society, based on collective rights and shared responsibilities.

Contributing author to CPD’s book More Than Luck: Ideas Australia needs now, Eva’s chapter Strengthening our social fabric argued that we need to rethink tax and income policy practices to make our society more civil. More recently Eva was also a contributing author to Pushing our luck: ideas for Australian progresswith her chapter ‘Putting society first: welfare for wellbeing’. She has researched and published on a variety of policy and social issues, including: childcare, sole parents and welfare payments, superannuation, social capital, community well-being, asylum seekers, corporate social responsibility, research and evaluation. A frequent media commentator, she sees herself as a problem solver rather than a specialist. Take a look at her website here

Dr Mark Davis

Dr Mark Davis is the author of The Land Of Plenty: Australia in the 2000s and Gangland: Cultural Elites and the New Generationalism. He is well-known as a cultural and political commentator, and teaches in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. Mark is a co-editor with Miriam Lyons of CPD’s bookMore Than Luck: Ideas Australia needs now.

Ian Dunlop

Ian Dunlop’s background is as a senior oil, gas and coal industry executive. He chaired the Australian Coal Association in 1987-88, chaired the AGO Experts Group on Emissions Trading in 1999-2000 and was CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors from 1997-2001. He is Chairman of Safe Climate Australia, Deputy Convenor of the Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil and a Member of the Club of Rome. Ian is a contributing author to CPD’s book More Than Luck: Ideas Australia needs now. Ian’s chapter Facing our limits identifies that we are making a great strategic error in protecting our carbon-intensive industries in the misguided expectation that global markets will continue to demand coal in large volumes over the long term.

Dr Lindy Edwards

Dr Lindy Edwards is the author of How to Argue with an Economist: Re-Opening Political Debate in Australia and The Passion of Politics: the role of ideas in Australia. She is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of New South Wales, Canberra. Lindy has previously been an economic adviser in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, worked as a Press Gallery Journalist for The Sydney Morning Herald and been Economic Adviser to then leader of the Australian Democrats, Natasha Stott Despoja. Lindy is a contributing author to CPD’s recent book Pushing our luck: ideas for Australian progresswith her chapter ‘Welcome home: preventing the next culture war’. Her columns regularly appear in the Fairfax Press.

Ben Eltham

Ben Eltham is a writer, researcher and journalist. He trained to postgraduate level in neuroscience and philosophy at the University of Queensland before spending the next decade devoted to his love for culture and the arts. Ben has worked as a producer at a number of arts festivals and writes regularly about Australian politics, culture and the arts in academic publications and the popular media. Ben is New Matilda’s national affairs correspondent, and a regular industry columnist at Arts Hub. Ben’s academic research interests include Australia cultural and media policy, innovation and copyright policy, and the national security implications of climate change. He is currently a research fellow at Deakin University’s Centre for Memory, Imagination and Ideas. Ben is a contributing author to CPD’s publication More Than Luck: Ideas Australia needs now. His chapter jointly written with Marcus Westbury, Cultural policy in Australia argues that Australia’s fragmented cultural policy needs to move beyond its ‘funding paradigm’.

Kate Gauthier

Kate Gauthier is a public servant and chair of ChilOut – Children out of Immigration Detention. Kate sits on the board of management for the Salvation Army humanitarian operations in Manus Island and Nauru as well as the ACT Nursing and Midwifery board. Formerly, she was National Director of refugee policy lobby group A Just Australia and was the immigration and refugee policy adviser to Senator Andrew Bartlett and the community liaison officer for Senator Aden Ridgeway. Kate was a co-founder of the Refugee Assistance Project, a board member of PolMin (the Political Ministry Network), and sat on the NSW Legal Aid Review Committee. She has participated in a range of government advisory panels on refugee and immigration issues, and was one of 1,000 Australians chosen to attend the 2020 policy summit, attending in the Governance Stream. Kate has a Masters degree in International Social Development and mentors NGOs and advocates in policy lobbying and campaigning. She has written for a variety of journals and magazines on immigration, human rights and multicultural issues. Kate lives in Canberra with her partner, two children and four chickens.

Dr Donna Green

Dr Donna Green is a Senior Lecturer and Researcher at the Climate Change Research Centre & Associate Investigator for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Systems Science at the University of New South Wales. Her research interests include taking an interdisciplinary approach to understanding and explaining climate impacts on Indigenous communities in northern Australia. She co-authored ‘Screw Light Bulbs: smarter ways to save Australians time and money’, a popular science book on energy and climate policy. She was a contributing author to the fourth and fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, and has advised on climate policy around the world.

Caroline Hoisington

Caroline Hoisington is an agricultural and natural resources economist, and an advocate for sustainable development, democratic policy reform, and environmental management. She is the author of Rough trade: How Australia’s trade policies contribute to illegal logging in the Pacific Region, co-editor of the book Food Policy published by Johns Hopkins University Press for the World Bank. She is an honorary fellow at the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS), and a visiting fellow at Sydney Institute of Marine Sciences (SIMS). Caroline has worked as a senior natural resources economist and policy analyst in various development agencies across the US, Europe, Asia and Africa including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, bilateral aid agencies like USAID, UN Agencies, the EU, NGOs and consulting firms. She writes on a range of policy areas including trade policy, environmental management, carbon trading and food policy. Her current interests centre particularly around forests and oceans.

Ray Ison

Ray Ison leads the Systemic Governance Research Program within Monash Sustainability Institute, Monash University, Clayton where he is Professor, Systems for Sustainability. He is also based at the Open University (UK), where he and colleagues run the STiP (Systems Thinking in Practice) Postgraduate Program. Ray has been Professor of Systems at the OU since 1994 and has developed an international reputation in Systems scholarship, made significant contributions through his research, teaching and consultancy in the areas of systems thinking in practice and social learning, systemic environmental decision making, ‘knowledge transfer’, design of learning/inquiring systems and agricultural systems.

Ray’s work has found practical application in diverse fields including water and river governance, organisational change, staff induction, Higher Education reform, rural development and climate change adaptation. Ray’s most recent book is ‘Systems Practice: How to Act in a Climate Change World’ (2010). His recent work investigates how social learning could be employed as an alternative governance mechanism for managing complex, or ‘wicked’ situations, particularly water catchments and other multiple stakeholder settings. Ray is a contributing author to CPD’s book More Than Luck: Ideas Australia needs now. Ray’s chapter Governance that works brings systems thinking to public service reform. You can read more at Ray’s blog.

Dr Steve Keen

Dr Steve Keen is the author of the best-selling book Debunking Economics, where he laid out new ground as a critic of conventional economics by being highly mathematical in his own research. His main research interest is in developing mathematical models of Hyman Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis. He is the author of two reports for the Centre for Policy Development: Debt Freedom Day 2007 and Deeper in Debt: Australia’s addiction to borrowed money. In 2014, he was appointed Head of the School of Economics, History and Politics at Kingston University near London.

Arja Keski-Nummi

Arja Keski-Nummi‘s career with the Department of Immigration and Citizenship spanned more than 30 years. Most recently, she was First Assistant Secretary of the Refugee, Humanitarian and International Division from 2007 – 2010, where her responsibilities included high level policy and reform of all aspects of Australia’s refugee and humanitarian program. This encompassed asylum and protection issues in Australia, Australia’s offshore humanitarian resettlement programs and engagement with international organisations, UN agencies, NGOs and governments on matters relating to protection and humanitarian assistance to displaced people. Arja has played a key role in the development of Australia’s settlement and integration policies for humanitarian entrants as well as being involved in direct delivery of services to refugees and migrants. From 1987 – 1993 she worked in Senior Adviser positions to immigration ministers in the Hawke and Keating Governments, including to Mick Young and Gerry Hand. In 2010 Arja received the Public Service Medal for her work delivering Australia’s Humanitarian Program.

Miriam was a delegate to the 2020 Summit and was profiled in the ‘Thinkers’ category of The Australian’sEmerging Leaders series, as a ‘Woman Shaping Australia’ in Madison Magazine and as an AFR Boss 2010 ‘True Leader’. She is on the board of the Centre for Australian Progress and the advisory committee of the Centre for Cosmopolitan Civil Societies at UTS. Formerly policy coordinator for New Matilda, Miriam has a history of bringing policy ideas to new audiences, as the former director of the Interface Festival of Ideas in Sydney, and the Ideas Program for the Straight out of Brisbane Festival. Miriam has also worked as a freelance writer and researcher and as a media development consultant in East Timor.

Dr David McKnight

Dr David McKnight is Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales. He is the author of Beyond Right and Left: New Politics and the Culture War, a book which analyses the rise of the Right, the problems of the Left and the culture war around feminism, multiculturalism and the politics of values. In 2012 his book, Rupert Murdoch: An Investigation of Political Power was published. His most recent book is co-authored Big Coal: Australia’s Dirtiest Habit which was published in 2013 with Guy Pearse and Bob Burton

He is an historian of the Cold War, having written an authoritative history of ASIO, Australia’s Spies and Their Secrets (1994) which won the Non Fiction prize at the NSW Literary Awards. He also researches media and political influence and formerly worked as journalist on the Sydney Morning Herald, ABC TV’s Four Corners and on the weekly Tribune. His political and social commentary appears in major newspapers. A collection of David’s writings can be found at his website: davidmcknight.com.au

John Menadue AO

John Menadue was Private Secretary to Gough Whitlam from 1960 to 1967. He then served seven years as General Manager of News Limited, Sydney. He headed the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet from 1974 to 1976, working for Prime Ministers Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser. After four years as Ambassador to Japan, he returned to Australia in 1980 to head the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs. He was CEO of Qantas between 1986 and 1989. He has chaired major Health reviews in NSW and SA. He was the founding chair of the Centre for Policy Development. He co-authored the CPD report on the asylum-seeker and refugee debate, A New Approach with Kate Gauthier and Arja Keski-Nummi. Read his articles for the CPD here. He has a blog at johnmenadue.com/blog/

Tony Moore

Tony Moore is an academic, cultural historian, author and former ABC TV documentary maker with a special interest in media reform, Australian popular culture, artistic bohemia, education and Labor and radical politics. Tony is a Senior Lecturer in Communications and Media Studies at Monash University and former Director of its National Centre for Australian Studies. He was employed at the ABC for nine years working in documentaries, and at Four Corners, Foreign Correspondent and 7.30 Report and prior to that was a member of the ABC’s National Advisory Council. Tony also had a decade long career in book publishing, serving as commissioning editor at Pluto Press and Cambridge University Press and was series editor of the Australian Encounters book series for CUP. Tony’s latest book is the critically acclaimed history Dancing with Empty Pockets: Australia’s Bohemians Since 1860 (Allen & Unwin 2012) and earlier publications include Death or Liberty: rebels and radicals transported to Australia 1788 – 1868 (Allen & Unwin 2010, and now to be an ABC documentary) and The Barry McKenzie Movies (2005 Currency Press). Tony appears regularly as a commentator in the media.

Adam Rorris

Adam Rorris is an education economist and policy analyst working extensively in Australia and overseas. For the Gonski review on school funding, he was the lead author of the paper on funding for disadvantaged students. He has worked for the World Bank, Unicef, UNESCO, AusAID and other international agencies to help develop robust funding systems for national school systems throughout Asia and the Pacific. During 2002-2007 Adam worked as the Manager/Principal Analyst of the Schools Resourcing Taskforce for the Ministerial Council of Australian Education Ministers. He has worked with all state and Commonwealth departments of education as well as representatives of the non-government school sector. He provides commentary on Australian education issues through The Sydney Morning Herald.

Tani Shaw

Tani Shaw is currently undertaking a PhD with the Institute for Sustainable Futures, at the University of Technology, Sydney and is a Sustainable Economy Research Fellow with the Centre for Policy Development. Prior to this Tani completed a Masters of Environmental Management with the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of New South Wales, Sydney and a Bachelor of Business from Southern Cross University. Tani’s fellowship with the Centre for Policy Development is generously sponsored by Slater and Gordon. Tani is a contributing author to CPD’s publication More Than Luck: Ideas Australia needs now. Tani’s chapter What does ‘progress’ mean to you looks at alternative ways to measure Australia’s progress.

Dr James Slezak

Dr James Slezak is Director of Strategy at The New York Times. He was previously at McKinsey & Co, and was partner and founding executive team member at Purpose.com. He is also managing partner of New Economy Lab, and co-founded sharing economy group Peers.org, in partnership with grassroots activists and Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs and investors. James is co-author of the book Climate Change and Australia, as well as other reports and articles on sustainability and climate change. He majored in mathematics at the University of Sydney, and holds a PhD in Physics from Cornell University, where he researched high temperature superconductivity. He was appointed as an affiliate at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Dr Ben Spies-Butcher

Dr Ben Spies-Butcher is a lecturer in Sociology at Macquarie University. He has a PhD in Economics from the University of Sydney. His research focuses on the political economy of social and environmental policy, and on political participation. He is a Research Associate at the Retirement Policy and Research Centre at the University of Auckland, a Board member of Shelter NSW, and co-author of Market Society, published with Cambridge University Press. Ben co-wrote the paper Reforming Australia’s hidden welfare state for CPD. Ben is a contributing author to CPD’s recent publication More Than Luck: Ideas Australia needs now. Ben’s chapter jointly written with Adam Stebbing, Getting value for public money: housing, pensions and child care argues that our leaders need to adopt more direct funding models to maximise the services delivered for each government dollar spent.

Adam Stebbing

Dr Adam Stebbing is a sociologist broadly interested in the interactions of social policy, taxation and inequality. He teaches and undertakes research in applied sociology in the Department of Sociology at Macquarie University in Sydney. His current research interests include: the growing role of social tax expenditures in Australian social policy; the implications of the current emphasis of private retirement savings for fiscal sustainability and inequity as the population ages; and, homelessness in Australia. Adam is a contributing author to CPD’s recent publication Pushing Our Luck: Ideas for Australian Progress. Adam’s chapter, jointly written with Adrian March, Miriam Lyons and Shaun Wilson, argues that we need to widen debates about tax policy to ensure sustainability and equity in the longer term. Adam was also a contributing author for More Than Luck: Ideas Australia needs now. His chapter jointly written with Dr Ben Spies-Butcher, Getting value for public money: housing, pensions and child care argues that our leaders need to adopt more direct funding more direct funding models to maximise the services delivered for each government dollar spent.

Marcus Westbury

Marcus Westbury is a writer, broadcaster, festival director and media maker responsible for some of Australia’s most innovative, unconventional and successful cultural events. He is well known for writing and presenting the three part series Not Quite Art for ABC1 and creating the How Should I Vote? website for GetUp that produced personalised how-to-vote cards for the 150,000 Australians in the lead-up to the 2007 Federal Election. A born and bred Novacastrian, Marcus is the founder of Newcastle’s infamous This Is Not Art festival. His other hats include stints as the Artistic Director of Melbourne’s Next Wave Festival and Co-director of the Cultural Program at Melbourne’s 2006 Commonwealth Games. Marcus has contributed to a wide variety of publications including the Griffith Review, Crikey, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, several anthologies, journals and countless websites. He is well noted in Australia’s arts community as a member of several committees including for The Australia Council, Arts Victoria, NSW Ministry for the Arts, The Australian Film Commission and was a participant in the 2020 Summit’s cultural stream. Marcus is contributing author to CPD’s recent publication More Than Luck: Ideas Australia. His chapter jointly written with Ben Eltham, Cultural policy in Australia argues that Australia’s fragmented cultural policy needs to move beyond its ‘funding paradigm’.

Dr James Whelan

James Whelan is the former Research Director of the CPD Public Service research program. Lead author of CPD reports Big Society and Australia, and The State of the Australian Public Service, James’s career includes leading social science research programs with several universities and institutions to examine deliberative and collaborative governance, environmental politics and social movements. He was theme leader for the Coastal Cooperative Research Centre’s Citizen Science research program, has published widely and presented at national and international conferences. James has worked with several social and environmental justice NGOs including Greenpeace and Amnesty International. He is founder-director of The Change Agency, a not-for-profit education and action research initiative that supports progressive social movements in the Asia-Pacific region.

Professor John Wiseman

John Wiseman is Deputy Director of the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne. John has worked in a wide range of public sector, academic and community sector settings including as Foundation Director of the McCaughey Centre, School of Population Health, University of Melbourne; Professor of Public Policy, Victoria University; and Assistant Director, Policy Development and Research, Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet. John is a co-ordinator for the Melbourne University/MSSI ‘Post carbon pathways project’. The main focus of his current work is on the social and political transformations needed to prevent runaway climate change and achieve a rapid transition to a just and resilient post-carbon future. John is a contributing author to CPD’s recent book Pushing our luck: ideas for Australian progresswith his chapter ‘Climate change: reconnecting politics with reality’.